Tagged: StateImpact Florida

It was a big year for education policy in Florida.

Mary Jane Saunders has quit.

The president of Florida Atlantic University says bad publicity splashed across national headlines was too much.

Next month would have been Saunders’ three-year anniversary as president.

While the university is showcasing her string of accomplishments, there was no way to get around a spate of missteps in recent months.

TALLAHASSEE -- Lawyers for a group of teachers asked a Leon County judge on Wednesday to throw out a nearly two-year-old state law aimed at tying teacher's pay and evaluations more closely to student performance.

The number of charter schools operating in the United States has surpassed 6,000 for the first time, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Charters are now serving a record 2.3 million students based on estimates from the current school year. But a pro-choice non-profit says Florida school districts are preventing more charters from opening.

Tony Bennett drove from Indiana over the weekend to start his first day as schools chief in Florida on Monday.

Last month the State Board of Education hired Bennett, a Republican who served as Indiana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction for one term.

He lost his re-election bid there after Democrat Glenda Ritz organized a grassroots campaign with help from the teachers union.

Bennett was viewed by some as being too aggressive towards teachers and not showing enough compassion when he pushed new policies, such as merit pay. 

Forty-five states and the District of Columbia are working toward full implementation of Common Core standards.

But there's a split in the way states will measure what students have learned. Two different testing systems are on the table.

One test will average a series of test results to determine a student’s score. The other is a single, adaptive test which tailors questions based on a student’s past answers.

The tests are being designed now for use by 2014-15.

Florida is in the process of transitioning to common core standards in public schools.

The first full year of implementation is scheduled for 2014-15.

45 states and Washington, D.C. have agreed to adopt common core standards.

The standards will measure whether students across the country are reaching certain benchmarks in English, Math and Language Arts.

The series on remedial education at Florida’s colleges by NPR’s StateImpact Florida and the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting has prompted lots of conversations: Why are so many high school graduates needing remediation in college?  Should a high school diploma be a certificate of college readiness -- perhaps only for some students.

We chatted online with StateImpact’s Sarah Gonzalez and FCIR’s Mc Nelly Torres along with a social media audience of students, educators and people interested in education policy.